<p>I am surprised that you misread my post (or perhaps the thread). The question on the table is why UChicago undergrads seem to be conspicuously poorly represented at the nation’s top MBA programs, relative to undergrads from the Ivies/MIT/Stanford. The implication of your post is that such UChicago undegrads may have gone to hedge funds/alternative-investment funds which tend not to be heavily dominated by MBA’s. But that logic would hold only if UChicago undergrads are disproportionately overrepresented in the hedge/alternative space relative to the undergrads from the Ivies/MIT/Stanford. Is that what you are in fact asserting?</p>
<p>Oh yeah??? Chicago wasn’t even mentioned until RML mentioned it in post 18.
Perhaps to you this whole thread is about Chicago grads vs. econ grads at Ivies/MIT/Stanford.</p>
<p>Where did I say Chicago grads have gone to hedge funds. I said they have gone to work.</p>
<p>The hedge funds paragraph has nothing to do with Chicago grads. It implies not everyone needs an MBA to be financially successful. You should know that. Top feeder schools to Harvard Business schools have no real meaning in terms of financial success.</p>
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From Bloomberg</p>
<p>There are many people in their mid 20’s to mid 30’s who can make >$3M in a year in HF/alternative firms.</p>
<p>Oh yeah indeed. You are correct - Chicago wasn’t specifically mentioned until post #18 - but that’s the point. He posed an interesting observation in that post - an observation to which you specifically replied. Indeed, you even quoted his post in your reply. Without his post, you would not have replied. </p>
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<p>Uh, how’s that? My initial post on this thread is #22, which has nothing to do with RML’s statement regarding Chicago. </p>
<p>On the other hand, your posts, so far, have had everything to do with Chicago. </p>
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<p>Fair enough. Then we still have RML’s observation left unexplained - why are Chicago undergrads so lightly represented at the top MBA programs, relative to undergrads from peer schools?</p>
<p>I don’t think that Chicago is all that well recruited by the elite firms…its as simple as that. Bain and McKinsey don’t recruit at UChicago and these are perhaps 2 of the top 5 feeder companies to HBS and Stanford GSB. Its tough to get the golden ticket at these two business schools when you don’t have the elite pedigree they are looking for…</p>
<p>You do understand how top business schools accept people from nearly all sectors not to exclude government?</p>
<p>I haven’t done research into this topic, but I wonder about the following numbers. Does someone outside of the financial services sector stand a better than of being accepted to a top business school compared to someone currently working in the financial services sector? For example, if you are qualified and those in your field are self-selecting (the % that actually desire to obtain an MBA is far lower than the % in finance), doesn’t it reason to allude to the following:</p>
<p>Big fish in small pond vs. small fish in large pond.</p>
<p>I’ve been a guest lecturer in my field at Kellogg, and the misinformation about “feeder schools into top b schools” has just got to stop. Top b schools want people from diverse backgrounds - the arts, nonprofits, marketing, whatever. It is not just all about finance or management consulting. I work with McKinsey folks on a regular basis. They are smart, bright people, but they are not any more “golden” to elite business schools thn anyone else. The idealization of these companies by all of you is insane and makes you look naive and unworldly.</p>
<p>Surprised to see Amherst be so low. Is the disparity between Amherst and Williams really that high? Or do Amherst students usually go into professional fields other than Business?</p>
<p>I remember the WSJ Feeder Ranking (that included Top Business, Law, and Med Schools) had Amherst doing quite well (though not as well as Williams)</p>
<p>^ You’d be surprised a number of MBAs are doctors, lawyers, engineers or businessmen. </p>
<p>I think it has something to do with school culture, too, aside from access to top jobs which is a good preparation to entering onto a top MBA program. What I mean is there are probably many more Williams grads getting into top banks/firms than there are Amherst grads. The same observation can be said between Berkeley and USC. Berkeley grads are getting the better jobs thus are given better access to top grad business schools.</p>
<p>Well, I’ll put it to you this way. Top business schools may say that they want people from diverse backgrounds. But the type of people who they actually admit belies whatever they say. For example, of the ~900 students in the Harvard Business School MBA class of 2013, McKinsey alone accounts for the prior work experience of over 100 of those students, and that’s not even counting any of the other elite consulting firms. Now, granted, not all of them came to HBS directly from McKinsey - many joined McKinsey right out of school then switched to another industry (e.g. private equity) and then come to HBS, but the fact remains that they still completed a stint at McKinsey. </p>
<p>Nor do I think that disentangling correlation vs. causation is a key issue. Even if you truly believe that the McKinsey (or other elite firm) brand name conveys precisely zero market signaling power and that the experience provided by those firms provides precisely zero additional advantage over working at an average firm - a most extreme position that I doubt anybody would seriously entertain - it would still be true that the mere fact that you garnered a job offer from McKinsey would be correlated with the likelihood that you would be a prime future MBA candidate, even if you never took the offer. </p>
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<p>Frankly, without access to detailed admissions data with which to perform a statistical matching analysis between finance vs. non-finance candidates, we’ll never know for sure. </p>
<p>However, I suspect that the premise of the question is flawed for two ostensibly innately matched candidates almost certainly wouldn’t present the same outward qualifications. The finance employee will likely have superiors who have written MBA rec letters for numerous other subordinates before - and are likely to have attended top MBA programs themselves - and will therefore know exactly what they need to say to maximize your chances of admission. Indeed, many top finance executives are well-known by the admissions staff. A finance employee will surely have access to not only the best test prep materials that are being shared by other analysts in the office, but will be privy to strategies to optimize their essay and interview answers. The non-finance employee, which was stipulated to belong to a field where relatively few others are applying to top MBA programs, will have access to none of that social capital. Will his boss be able to provide him with the best rec? Will he have coworkers with which to coach him to shape his essay and interview answers for maximum effect? Probably not.</p>
<p>@sakky How does NYU Stern fare as a feeder college to HBS? Shouldn’t it go approximately as well as UVA or UMich, so lets say around 30 students?</p>
Yes, but I suspect the rationale of MBA programs looking for “diversity” is that they don’t expect all their graduating class to be completely homogeneous and pursue identical career fields.<br>
While a finance employee may have access to more superiors that have attended top MBA programs compared to a non-finance employee and may have access to better preparation, if their projected career paths are obviously divergent, are they not competing against their own “cohorts” for admission instead?</p>
<p>While the graduating class may not be completely homogeneous, it is ‘almost completely’ so, and the adcoms surely know it. It is no secret that for decades the vast majority of MBA graduates from the top programs have been heading to finance and consulting. Surely not coincidentally, those also happen to be the two industries where the vast majority of new MBA admits tend to come ‘from’. Intentionally or not, top MBA programs have effectively become waypoints on the standard finance/consulting career path.</p>
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<p>I suppose one could say that, but the exact same logic would also apply to the ‘diversity’ candidates as well. Harvard Business School is arguably the most interested of all of the top business schools in collating a diverse class of students - reserving a fungible figure of perhaps 1/4 of admissions seats to those students. But that only means that all of the diversity candidates - the Navy SEALS, the Peace Corps volunteers, the professional musicians, etc. - are competing against each other for that slice of seats. While I don’t know that the competition for those seats is more ‘intense’ per se, it is certainly far more unpredictable. How do you weigh the accomplishments of a Special Operations Forces soldier serving in Afghanistan vs. an Olympic athlete? Different admissions officers might arrive at wildly divergent decisions. At least with regards to finance and consulting, the pathway to admissions is straightforward - be one of the better-performing employees while compiling strong rec’s, essays, interviews and stats. While accomplishing that is not easy, at least you know what you have to do.</p>
<p>Fair enough but I’m still surprised by how low Amherst is compared to Williams, when the WSJ ranking has Amherst doing quite well. Oh okay, I suppose that makes sense. Would you say that Williams is a bit more pre-professional or is it a reputation issue? Because I was under the impression that recruiting wasn’t that much different at Amherst or Williams.</p>
<p>“6. The University of Chicago is not a great place to go if you are professionally minded. It is a phenominal school overall but its job placement isn’t on par with its lofty reputation.”</p>
<p>A very silly and inaccurate quote. I suggest you take a look at where the 10 richest Americans went to school:</p>
<p>1) Bill Gates - Harvard (dropout)
2) Warren Buffett - U. of Nebraska; Columbia
3) Larry Ellison - UChicago (dropout)
4) Charles Koch - MIT
5) David Koch - MIT
6) Christy Walton - no college
7) George Soros - London School of Economics
8) Sheldon Adelson - City College of New York (dropout)
9) Jim Walton - University of Arkansas
10) Alice Walton - Trinity University</p>
<p>It is true UChicago doesn’t have the mindless pre-professsional slant of the other top schools. Its students are more interested in winning Nobel prizes rather than becoming Wall Street criminals, but they still make a lot of money.</p>
<p>(This posting about feeders schools for business schools does not take into account the difference in size of the various schools–nor do you have any way of knowing how many students from each school applied to the top business schools.)</p>
<p>And, by the way, UChicago’s Business School is ranked from #1 to #4 in the major surveys. (#1 Businessweek, #3 Forbes, #4 U.S. News.)</p>
<p>So I think UChicago does just fine. Don’t settle for low-level consulting and IB jobs. Go for the big-time. Think billionaire not middle management.</p>
<p>Seems to me that plenty of Harvard graduates are ‘settling’ for those ‘mindless’, ‘low-level’ consulting and IB jobs of which you speak. Yet Harvard nevertheless seem to have little problem producing plenty of billionaires and Nobel Prize winners. Is UChicago’s student development strategy better than Harvard’s, and if so, what evidence demonstrates that?</p>
<p>What about if you wanted to work in Chicago and not on the East Coast? I have a hard time believing that Chicago-based companies would not have a bias for Booth and Kellogg graduates.</p>